Washington Post confirms data on nearly 10,000 people stolen from its Oracle environment

The newspaper said a “bad actor” contacted the company in late September, prompting an investigation that nearly a month later confirmed the extent of compromise.

The Washington Post said it, too, was impacted by the data theft and extortion campaign targeting Oracle E-Business Suite customers, compromising human resources data on nearly 10,000 current and former employees and contractors.

The company was first alerted to the attack and launched an investigation when a “bad actor” contacted the media company Sept. 29 claiming they gained access to the company’s Oracle applications, according to a data breach notification it filed in Maine Wednesday. The Washington Post later determined the attacker had access to its Oracle environment from July 10 to Aug. 22. 

The newspaper is among dozens of Oracle customers targeted by the Clop ransomware group, which exploited a zero-day vulnerability affecting Oracle E-Business Suite to steal heaps of data. Other confirmed victims include Envoy Air and GlobalLogic.

The Washington Post said it confirmed the extent of data stolen during the attack on Oct. 27, noting that personal information on 9,720 people, including names, bank account numbers and routing numbers, and Social Security numbers were exposed. The company didn’t explain why it took almost a month to determine the amount of data stolen and has not responded to multiple requests for comment. 

Oracle disclosed and issued a patch for the zero-day vulnerability —  CVE-2025-61882 affecting Oracle E-Business Suite — in a security advisory Oct. 4, and previously said it was aware some customers had received extortion emails. Mandiant, responding to the immediate fallout from the attacks, said Clop exploited multiple vulnerabilities, including the zero-day to access and steal large amounts of data from Oracle E-Business Suite customer environments.

Oracle, its customers and third-party researchers were not aware of the attacks until executives of alleged victim organizations received extortion emails from members of Clop demanding payment in late September. Cynthia Kaiser, senior vice president of Halcyon’s ransomware research center, previously told CyberScoop ransom demands reached up to $50 million.

Clop’s data-leak site included almost 30 alleged victims as of last week. The notorious ransomware group has threatened to leak alleged victims’ data unless it receives payment. 

The ransomware group has intruded multiple technology vendors’ systems before, allowing it to steal data and extort many downstream customers. Clop specializes in exploiting vulnerabilities in file-transfer services and achieved mass exploitation in 2023 when it infiltrated MOVEit environments, ultimately exposing data from more than 2,300 organizations.

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